Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere & Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja - Fast 'n' Bulbous (2024)

Two bands at their most adventurous peaks present extreme metal at it’s most alluring.

Blood Incantation’s fourth full-length album will likely end up being the popular crossover choice at the end of the year, the token metal album on lists that focus on other genres. That’s not quite me, as I do listen to as many extreme metal albums as I can handle, usually over 50 a year, especially variations of technical death and thrash metal. There’s a good reason why this will appeal to a wide range of tastes. Two years ago they surprised fans with a completely non-metal space ambient album, Timewave Zero (2022), pretty much a genre study in Berlin School progressive electronic (Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Edgar Froese) that wasn’t to everyone’s tastes. But as the Luminescent Bridge EP (2023) indicated, they were building up to something special, an epic mashup of technical death metal with prog and electronic space rock.

Absolute Elsewhere is about what I expected, but also beyond expectations, creating a far more accessible, engaging listening experience than any of their previous work prepared us for. One reason this appeals to me is that they’ve entered the cosmic territory of my favorite Italian doom/sludge/space rock band Ufomammut, but from a different angle. Contemplating existential and cosmic horrors, metaphysics and ancient aliens has been a common theme going back to Death, Coroner and Voivod and up through Cynic and Atheist. So while Blood Incantation are not quite pioneers, they navigate a balance between death metal growls and progressive elements better than anyone since early 00s Opeth. Perhaps most importantly, the band, around since 2011 but still in their 30s, exude a youthful enthusiasm for exploration and pushing boundaries. They sound like they’re creating sounds for the sheer joy of it, and have invited some interesting guests along for the ride at Berlin’s famed Hansa Studios, including Thorsten Quaeschning, who’s contributed synths, keyboards and guitar to Tangerine Dream since 2005, and another keyboardsist, Nicklas Malmqvist from Swedish psych proggers Hällas.

In true Kosmische fashion, the album is divided into just two suites, each with three sections called tablets. On “The Stargate,” the transitions between brutal passages worthy of Morbid Angel and cosmic prog are pretty smooth. The section that has some calling them out for being derivative is on Tablet II of “The Message,” where there are some similarities with Animals era Pink Floyd. But it’s in such a unique setting, it should be a bonus for Floyd fans. It’s only for four minutes, then Tablet III kicks in with some exciting, nimble, even catchy death metal riffs. The album title is indicative of the lyrical themes, named after a British band that released one sole progressive electronic and instrumental prog titled In Search of Ancient Gods: An Experience in Sound and Music Based on the Books of Erich von Däniken (1976). Starting with The Chariots of the Gods? (1968), the Swiss author/jailbird (for fraud and embezzlement) helped popularize pseudoscientific “paleo-contact” hypotheses of alien interaction with early humans, lending an extraterrestrial appendage in building, for example, the pyramids shown on the cover. It’s remained a popular theme in sci fi books, TV shows (von Däniken has presented on the Ancient Aliens series on History Channel) and movies, like Roland Emmerich’s Stargate (1994), Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element (1997), Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012), and remains a rich and entertaining source for prog metal lyrics.

Absolute Elsewhere presents such a cohesive, compelling, cinematic vision, I wouldn’t be surprised if someday it inspires a movie that includes some of this music in the soundtrack.

Oranssi Pazuzu – Muuntautuja (Nuclear Blast)

Finnish avant-space rock psychedelic black metal band Oranssi Pazuzu have reached a dazzling peak on album number six. When they emerged with weirdness fully formed on Muukalainen puhuu (2009), many in the metal community and beyond agreed they were something special, concocting an original sound that draws from black metal, Kosmische, psych, prog, post-punk, industrial and ambient. They’ve consistently improved their craft on nearly every album since then, while still remaining a fairly difficult listening experience. Somehow, something’s changed on their latest. While there are still a diverse blend of different elements to their sound, it’s darker than ever, almost like a more focused black metal album, yet also more accessible. I don’t listen to black metal very often because the vocals are usually too unnerving, like a demon being tortured to death. The imaginative approach to filtering vocals through electronic effects result in something that may invoke cosmic terror, but in a much more colorfully psychedelic and engaging manner. Like tripping balls on a ritualistic potion in order to commune with Chthonic gods.

Congratulations to Oranssi Pazuzu for their membership in the Six Album Run Club

2020s Extreme Metal

1. Blood Incantation – Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media, 2024) | USA | Bandcamp
2. Tomb Mold – The Enduring Spirit (20 Buck Spin, 2023) | Canada | Bandcamp
3. Sweven – The Eternal Resonance (Van, 2020) | Sweden | Bandcamp
4. Gulch – Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress (Closed Casket Activities, 2020) | USA | Bandcamp
5. Horrendous – Ontological Mysterium (Season Of Mist, 2023) | USA | Bandcamp
6. Anciients – Beyond the Reach of the Sun (Season Of Mist, 2024) | USA | Bandcamp
7. Oranssi Pazuzu – Mestarin kynsi (Nuclear Blast, 2020) | Finland | Bandcamp
8. Oranssi Pazuzu – Muuntautuja (Nuclear Blast, 2024) | Finland | Bandcamp
9. Witch Ripper – The Fight After the Fall (Magnetic Eye, 2023) | USA | Bandcamp
10. Blood Incantation – Luminescent Bridge EP (Century Media, 2023) | USA | Bandcamp
11. Pike vs The Automaton – Pike vs The Automaton (MNRK Heavy, 2022) | USA | Bandcamp
12. Cryptic Shift – Visitations From Enceladus (Blood Harvest, 2020) | UK | Bandcamp
13. Gojira – Fortitude (Roadrunner, 2021) | France | Buy
14. The Otolith – Folium Limina (Blues Funeral, 2022) | USA | Bandcamp
15. Church Of Misery – Born Under A Mad Sign (Rise Above, 2023) | Japan | Buy
16. Cannibal Corpse – Violence Unimagined (Metal Blade, 2021) | USA | Bandcamp
17. Panopticon – …and Again Into the Light (Bindrune, 2021) | USA | Bandcamp
18. Imperial Triumphant – Alphaville (Century Media, 2020) | USA | Buy
19. Cynic – Ascension Codes (Season Of Mist, 2021) | USA | Bandcamp
20. The Ocean – Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic | Cenozoic (Metal Blade, 2020) | Germany | Bandcamp
21. Ulcerate – Stare Into Death And Be Still (Debemur Morti, 2020) | New Zealand | Bandcamp
22. Ulcerate – Cutting the Throat of God (Debemur Morti, 2024) | New Zealand | Bandcamp
23. KEN mode – NULL (Artoffact, 2022) | Canada | Bandcamp
24. Phantom – Transylvanian Nightmare EP (Phantom, 2024) | Mexico | Bandcamp
25. Restless Spirit – Blood of the Old Gods (Restless Spirit, 2021) | USA | Bandcamp

Coming Soon:

Opeth – The Last Will and Testament (Reigning Phoenix, Nov. 22)